Editorial: Sex, lies and gifts

Few things in politics are more contemptible than disgraced leaders clinging to office, refusing to resign and apologize to the public.

Few things in politics are more contemptible than disgraced leaders clinging to office, refusing to resign and apologize to the public.

A Republican senator from Alaska and the former Democratic mayor of Detroit are two of the latest examples. Ted Stevens and Kwame Kilpatrick displayed an appalling sense of entitlement, apparently believing that they should escape the ramifications of their wrongdoing.

Stevens, 84, is the longest-serving GOP senator. He remained as arrogant as ever after a federal jury in the nation's capital convicted him on Tuesday of lying on his financial-disclosure statements in order to conceal gifts that improved his Alaska home by $250,000. Most of the home renovations and other presents came from Bill Allen, the former owner of a large oil-services company.

The guilty verdicts on seven counts reflected the government's overwhelmingly case against Stevens. Yet the senator was defiant after his courtroom defeat, vowing to remain in office and continue as a candidate for re-election. Alaskans will decide his political fate in Tuesday's election. If voters re-elect Stevens, the Senate should expel him, which it might, considering the number of his fellow Republicans who are calling for him to step down.

For years, Stevens was the poster boy for earmarks -- who can forget the "Bridge to Nowhere"? -- routing enormous federal sums to projects in Alaska. Now he's the poster boy for Senate corruption. His sentencing hasn't been scheduled.

Kilpatrick had tried to hide an extramarital affair with his chief of staff. His infidelity wasn't a crime, but he lied about the affair under oath, obstructed justice during an investigation and assaulted a deputy sheriff who tried to deliver a subpoena in July.

The disclosure of text messages between the mayor and Christine Beatty caught them in a lie, but Kilpatrick refused to leave office, throwing city government into turmoil for eight months. On Sept. 4, the mayor accepted a plea bargain that brought his resignation and a four-month sentence.

At the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner excoriated the former mayor for his comments after his guilty plea. Kilpatrick vowed a political comeback and blamed his problems on Gov. Jennifer Granholm's decision to hold hearings on the mayor's removal from office.

Officeholders often lose sight of the responsibility that comes with their positions, and they begin to believe they are entitled to favors and flirtations that tend to arise around those in power. Stevens and Kilpatrick are reminders to other public officials.